Recent developments in Gaza have been appalling in their own right, but the attitude of the “International Community” is beyond words. Continuing a long battle against the untiring defence of Israel by my local MP I wrote him just a few words: “What do you think of your psychopathic friends now, Grant?” I probably imagined in the moment that the point was inescapable. Quick came the reply with a reference to an article that opened with the usual defence of the indefensible.

I shared my reply with a friend; we naturally cast about looking for humanity when we glimpse the abyss. It was suggested that I share my thoughts more widely.

I read that line “Hamas needs martyrs at Israel and Gaza’s borders” and I was thinking of the excuse presented that “Although I had been drinking and was speeding it’s quite obvious that the person I ran over deliberately walked in front of my car in order to claim insurance”.

This is the reasoning of the psychopath that embraces even the most absurdly contorted interpretation in order to blame the victim. It’s the “she was asking for it” explanation of the rapist, the “she seduced me” claim of the paedophile or that line from the “he had it coming” song in the musical Chicago.

The state of Israel and its Zionist supporters have used this ‘blame the victim’ strategy from so many different perspectives in so many outrageous situations that it should be obvious to anyone, even absent the other half of this symmetry that construes all criticism as anti-Semitism.

Yet even if this current outrage in Gaza had to stand alone out of context one would only have to contemplate what it must take for an unarmed individual to go there and stand out in the open where Israeli soldiers are firing live rounds at the crowd to understand that even as a Ghandi style pacifist assertion of the meagre power of the powerless it is an act of absolute desperation.

Unless one is completely ignorant of the circumstances of Gaza, the history of events relating to Hamas and the context of 70 years of persecution, genocide and ethnic cleansing in a criminal theft of land for the Zionist project, there must necessarily be a suppression of part of one’s soul in order to coalesce in this dark fantasy of the psychopath.

It does you psychological harm, Grant.

Indeed, the international failure to deliver justice in Palestine is perilous to humanity and at this juncture we are morally bankrupt. Not even a god could atone for the sins involved here; abject indifference to the most obscene treatment of other human beings in the cause of a most degradingly criminal objective.

Allen L Jasson: I’m an aging radical, turned that way in my 20’s from a trusting, gullible youth who had believed that governments were about the common good, by conscription into Australia’s National Service near the end of the Vietnam War. Degree educated thanks to Gough Whitlam, outraged by the narrow minded narcissism of the world’s power elite but unbearably light in the optimism of so many who still fight, against all the madness, for a better way of being.

Today, the Republic of India faces its gravest moment since it was born seventy years ago. What has hit the second most populous nation in the world – just in the last few months itself – is nothing short of a crisis of Biblical proportions. An untreatable viral epidemic, a debilitating lockdown, a collapsed economy, hunger stalking every corner of[Read More…]